I take it we're not going to talk about the other possible worlds we saw at PAX then?
Maybe if we find time, but it's been a few weeks so we should move on. Besides, that Firefall one (not sure what the actual planet's name was - Urth or something like that) we looked at is supposedly letting other people get more hands-on time in the next couple months, so I might as well wait for that. As for the other one, I'm reluctant to talk about it.
Didn't care for it?
No, I liked what I saw. The problem is I didn't see enough. You and I got to check out Tyria and the WildStar world for 40 minutes. In that 40 minutes we had time to check out combat, questing, gear itemization - pretty much enough time to get a feel for everything we care about. Here I only got 20 minutes and half of that was talking. Don't get me wrong - the quality of the talking was good. I was interested in what everyone had to say. Unfortunately I was also interested in doing non-talky things and there wasn't really enough time for both. I could comment on what I tried, but I feel that would be unfair with the little I was able to see.
Understandable. Where does that leave us for today's post then? I know Lokaja hasn't finished his Ranger profession post because neither of us has seen him for a while.
Actually got the idea from the guys that have been giving out all of the details about Tyria. They're doing a week of posts about one of the five races we get to choose from in Tyria, seeing as how the bulk of us can't just hop over there and expect to fit in.
Ah yes, I'd been wondering when we would get to discussing that. Will we be focusing on the same race everyone else is talking about at the moment?
Where's the fun in being topical? Nah, we're gonna do this the way we talked about the professions: we'll talk about the ones that we've picked out for ourselves. It just works out here because I know you and I are planning on the same race.
Correct. I cannot speak for the remainder of the team, but the two of us at the very least will be adventuring through Tyria in the guise of a Charr.
Seems a little more intimidating than Med as a Blood Elf, huh?
That's right, though I assume for different reasons. I'll be going with the Charr partly because, well, they're the closest match I have to being a Tauren. They're big, they have horns, they're fuzzy - seems kinda obvious to me. They're a bit more warlike than my people, though that's probably going to shift some because of Garrosh (I'm not bitter, no...). To be honest though the bulk of their fighting is retaliatory since this Ascalon place did apparently take their land first and this Flame Legion group of Charr was apparently subjugating the whole race for a while there. When you listen to some of them talk though and hear how much they enjoy their work, you can't really mistake them for peaceful folks. Really though, I think that's the main reason I like them.
As much as I consider myself a Tauren, we're a race of druids, hunters and shamans with some outliers. I'm respected, sure, but you know you're always on the edge of society to some extent when you take up the blade. With the Charr though, everything that makes me who I am is considered a virtue. They value strength in battle and fearlessness. They strive for discipline in everything they do. Most important to an old smith like me though, they honor being industrious, particularly when it comes to working with metal.
Ah, now you're getting to the good part. Sure they value skill in combat and discipline, but most importantly they strive for technological advancement. It just so happens that being in a constant state of war is a great way to make said progress. The Charr have made great advances in engineering and metallurgy over the years, making them militarily and technologically superior to the other races of Tyria.
I'm sure those Asura guys might question us on this.
I know a warrior should prolly be Blood Legion, but I like the attitude of these Iron Legion guys
Bah! Let them argue the point! It doesn't change the fact that they're behind. While they waste their efforts on technomagical constructs like those golems they all have, the Charr have proven their dominance not only with their war machines, but with their finest work: the Black Citadel. The entire city is a vast foundry and haven for crafting and engineering work. While some members of the Charr do practice magic, the bulk of the race places their faith in steel rather than spells. Honestly after reading what you sent me about them, I couldn't find any compelling evidence to choose one of the alternatives.
Yeah. I'm gonna have to find volunteers for the other races. We'll all be able to work on the same stuff, but it's always good to try and spread resources in case we're missing something. Might have to ask one of the gnomes to be our Asura rep though; I can't think of any of the regular crew that would want the assignment. I could be wrong though. For the next post we'll ask Sol which way he's leaning. I'll be the one doing the asking though, not you. Pretty sure he's still sore about the whole "transforming him into a Tauren" thing.
Sigh... It's been months. Sometimes scientific progress has a few side effects. Nobody died, so it's not like anything that bad happened. Besides he'd just have to change for Tyria, so really I gave him practice. He should be thanking me.
Yep, I'll definitely be the one talking to him instead of you.
Indeed. While I may not have been able to try out Tyria due to someone pulling rank, I did have one other world I was interested in. The week before we left for PAX I heard reports of a new potential world to investigate.
So what's the name of this place?
Well, the world is called Nexus, but all of the information I found was labeled WildStar. A codename perhaps, because honestly who would name a planet WildStar? Name aside I looked for information about this new world. The main feature was the trailer included below, but they gave a few details about the world itself.
Guessing man-eating plant dragons and hordes of robots weren't in the travel brochure
I'll discuss the world when I get into my demonstration, but suffice it to say I was intrigued and put it on my list of places to check out on our trip. Like your Tyria expedition, mine was also 40 minutes so I actually had time to work. It's still early, so the only race/class combinations available were those shown in the trailer: the Granok Warrior, the Human Spellslinger, and the Aurin Esper. I chose the Esper and began exploring Nexus.
*chuckle*
What's so funny?
Oh nothing, just the idea of you running around as a bunny girl. For some reason that's amusing.
Sigh, if I could've chosen male, I would have. I thought about trying the Warrior, but I was actually talking to someone working at the show and when I asked for a recommendation, he suggested the Esper. I believe he said he was the lead combat designer or something like that, so I assumed he knew what he was talking about. Nice fellow by the way - he was pretty much talking to me the entire time I was waiting for my turn and he answered quite a few of my questions.
The demo began with me in the middle of a crashed spaceship. Before you say anything, no I didn't cause said crash; it was like that when I got there. I was resuscitated by someone else on the ship, then sent off to begin the normal adventurer process of running items around and killing the indigenous population for quest givers. There was one small difference in that though and that would be the path I chose.
You mean your class?
No, that's separate. In addition to choosing a race and class, you also have to choose a path. Basically a path is somewhat of a supplemental way of gaining experience and treasure. You still have the normal quests that everyone does and there's always monsters and the like around to slaughter, but you can tailor it a bit to reward you for how you would prefer to work.
The four path options are Soldier, Explorer, Scientist, and Settler. At the demo only Soldier and Explorer were active, so I don't have first-hand experience with the latter two though I have seen reports of how those are supposed to work. Starting from the top though, Soldier is pretty self-explanatory: you like to kill things. The Soldier path will support this by giving you the opportunity to prove yourself in combat. Everyone has some opportunity to do this: there were experience bonuses for kill chains and some pseudo-quests popped into my log while I was working that said, "Hey, you're good at killing these monsters. Think you can kill another eight in two minutes?" The Soldier however can take this one step further. At certain points he can basically drop a challenge flag and waves of monsters will come towards him. If he survives the waves, he'll then have to fight a mini-boss of sorts and should the Soldier survive that, he'll be rewarded.
I chose the Explorer path since Scientist wasn't available. I'm not normally the explorer of the group (that's more Lokaja and Daikaja's preference), but I enjoyed myself with the few explorer missions I was able to accomplish. Basically you'll be running around and every so often you'll receive a call over your radio asking you to place a beacon somewhere or investigate an anomaly. When you go to the spot on the map where the quest is marked, you'll see some sort of environmental obstacle.
The first one I found was a mountain with periodic landslides that I had to either dodge by hiding behind rocks or I had to time my double-jumps to leap over the waves of snow. For the second one I ran into what looked like a sheer cliff face, but when I inspected it further I found a secret path that led to the top of the rock where I could place the beacon. Finally the third one had me following a strange energy signature. When I reached the first spot where the floating energy ball had been sitting, I was infused with power that allowed me to leap to great heights which allowed me to follow the energy ball up to the top of the rock spire it had flown up to. In each of these cases, I received treasure and experience for doing something that many of us would've done on our own simply out of curiosity or boredom.
Yeah, I remember my old wall-walking days back in Vanilla when I had nothing to do in-between raids other than sell Lionheart Helms and Stronghold Gauntlets.
The other two paths are similar from what I've been told. Scientist examines things out in the field and they can unlock bonuses like extra damage against monsters or finding items in the environment to heal their party members. They also find out more about the world itself since the path is all about digging in for more information. Settlers are a bit more social - you get tasks like using an item to buff nearby people or to fix something that's broken in a settlement. I still believe I'll be going with Scientist when I get another chance to work with this, though I did have fun with the few Explorer missions I was able to work on. Would've actually liked to finish the last couple I found, but I had priorities.
Not enough time to do all the quests?
For more than one reason. Back to my demo though. Combat was somewhat of a mix between what we're used to in Azeroth with a little from Tyria. The Esper was a caster class like I'm used to, but it had combo points and finishers like rogues. The nice part about the combo points though was that pretty much every ability that wasn't a finisher generated combo points, so you didn't feel like using heals or self-shields was a waste of a GCD. There was a bit more standing around than in Tyria since my main combo point building attack had a cast time, but it was significantly more mobile than Azeroth due to the dodge mechanic. It operates similar to how the Tyria dodge works, but it had an additional bonus. Remember how I said there was an experience bonus for kill streaks? There's more bonuses like that and not all of them were limited to experience. If an enemy was charging up for a big attack (for example, the yetis had a cold breath attack you didn't want to be hit by), you could dodge the attack completely. When you did this, the enemy would be vulnerable for a few seconds and you could do bonus damage to him during that short window. This worked two ways though: if you didn't dodge that attack, it would probably knock you prone and it would be you that suffered all that extra damage.
Since I couldn't really play and film at the same time, watch TotalBiscuit's video
All in all I probably did a bit more stationary work than your druid friend that was trying the Warrior, but it was probably something like 50-50 and most of the movement was me dodging. A nice change of pace from the raids we've seen where it's "stand still until this happens, then run to the other side of the room and stand still until the next movement trigger".
Sounds pretty good so far. Shame you didn't have enough time to do everything though.
Depends on how you look at it.
I thought you said you couldn't finish the Explorer missions.
Yes, but those were side missions. There was a main storyline through the bulk of the missions and that's what I focused my time on.
Story was that good?
It was good, but it was less because of that and more because of what the people at the demo said.
Which was?
Well someone at the booth mentioned extra swag, so I asked that combat dev I'd been talking to about it. He said that everyone got a shirt, but that if you were able to finish the demo before the timer expired, you'd get something extra. I took that as a challenge.
Were you successful?
What do you think?
The closest we're ever going to get to "beating" a MMO
Last week I talked about warriors and the changes we'll have to prepare for heading from Azeroth to Tyria. Thinking about the basic concept of warriors, it seemed like it should have been a fairly short and simple post, right? The wall of text I wrote up for that post would say otherwise. The core of the class/profession is still there. We're still practicing the fine art of putting sharp things into bad people. It's just all of those little details that have changed like skills, movement, ranged combat, stances, etc. So you know, except for that list and pretty much everything else I was able to think of, it's all the same.
So now that we've covered what should have been the simplest comparison between the two realms, let's move on to something a little more complex. Yes, I know there's still at least one "this should be really simple" comparison left with rogues versus thieves, and arguably guardians and paladins could fall into this category as well. However I have to line someone up to do those posts, so they'll be ready when their corresponding "expert" gets off their butt and writes it. Solannis/Solagar is taking his time researching guardians (I think he's just pouting about the whole name/race change, but don't tell him I said anything). As for rogues, Takkal's not a very experienced writer, so I'll have to work with him on that one. In the meantime though, I do have someone that's done their homework.
Like I mentioned in our "we're not dead!" post, Medeleth has actually been the main person pushing for our move to Tyria. He's been putting in the bulk of his time these days into researching the world and hooking up everyone on the team with all of the pertinent information for their preferred professions. Now I could say that he's just a fan of the world or that he's finally taking an active interest in team business, but I'm not an idiot. I read his initial notes and I discovered his ulterior motives. Well, ulterior is probably giving it too much credit since half of that first memo he gave me could be paraphrased as "I can be an engineer instead of a warlock! Screw this magical nonsense, I wanna live here!" So without further ado, here's Med to tell all of you about engineers in Tyria:
First off, I was not that overly exuberant in my initial reports. It was simply a pleasant surprise to find a world that treats engineering as more than a mere hobby one does on the side to acquire a flying machine or a pair of goggles.
Care to clarify for everyone what you mean by "mere hobby"?
Certainly. As you're well aware, I think of myself first and foremost as an engineer. Given the choice, I would prefer to solve problems through the proper application of science. Well, and explosives. Regardless, my options for this method of problem solving have always been limited. The bombs I made had the potential to take out a foe, but for whatever reason, the laws that govern Azeroth dictate that I can only use one bomb every minute. I had other options for dealing damage with engineering, but those had similar cooldowns (if not longer). If I wanted to defeat an enemy of similar power through engineering alone, assuming that they never healed, such a battle would take about a half hour, if not longer. In addition, all of these tools required a significant investment of capital and resources to develop. As such, not only were my tools woefully inadequate for the tasks I was attempting, I was paying a premium for the privilege of failing at said tasks. This would be the primary reason I've spent the bulk of the last few years practicing as a warlock during tasks I've performed for our company. My warlock abilities got the job done, but I've never felt the sense of satisfaction from casting an Immolate like I have from making a mechanohog.
Okay, so what makes Tyria different? What makes you think that you'll be taken seriously as a professional engineer there when you've been less than successful back in Azeroth?
Numerous reasons, but I'll start from the beginning. For Tyrians engineering is not treated as a sidejob one does when they've got some downtime between running dungeons. In Tyria engineering is on par with professions like warrior and elementalist and one is expected to put in the same degree of dedication, if not more, to our craft as they would into learning your warrior abilities or a elementalist's spells. As a full-fledged profession, engineering has the same defining characteristics as any other profession: weapon selections, armor options, and combat skills.
Weapon selection are fairly basic and fit the profession: rifle, pistol and a shield, or dual-wielding pistols. This part actually covers one of the other issues I've always had with Azerothian engineering. Over the years I've made numerous rifles to advance my skills as an engineer. Some of these we've found a use for with different members of the team. However, the bulk of those weapons have either found their way to Matheion for disenchanting or to a vendor so they could be sold for a mere pittance. I'm not sure what was more insulting: the fact that I couldn't use the weapons that I designed, or the fact that there were so many of my fellow engineers working on their own skills that the effective assembly line they'd formed had devalued our inventions to the point where the finished product was worth less than its components.
You're preaching to the choir, Med. I'm a blacksmith - I'm used to basically throwing away gold for the sake of perfecting my techniques.
Yes, I know that you can sympathize with that particular problem, but you don't identify yourself first and foremost as a blacksmith. It's a point of pride for you, just like your Chef title, but you don't introduce yourself to others as Ragar, the blacksmith.
Indeed, we'll start with the rifle. First you have Hip Shot, a fairly basic attack but one you can perform while on the move. There's Net Shot which is fairly self-explanatory: you shoot a net at your target. Blunderbuss is a bit more interesting; it's a shot meant to cause your target to bleed (well, more so than any wound typically does), but it's more effective at close range. This seems like it's somewhat counter-intuitive given that rifles are normally considered a long range weapon. However your other two skills include Overcharged Shot (an attack that knocks back both you and your opponent) and Jump Shot (you launch yourself to a target location and actually deal damage to enemies near your landing zone). When you look at these five skills as a whole, you start to see potential synergy. An approaching enemy could be immobilized with a Net Shot with Hip Shots until he gets too close. At that point you could use Blunderbuss for the maximized bleeding effect, Overcharged Shot to knock both of you back, then Net Shot him to start the cycle over again. Should your opponent then decide that he'd rather not stick around, you could combine Jump Shot and Net Shot to prevent his escape.
It's like Heroic Leap, but useful
Dual-wielding pistols is another option. While it's lacking a lot of the distance control options of using a rifle, it does still have Glue Shot for that basic immobilize effect. What it lacks in control however, it makes up for in damaging effects. Explosive Shot is a basic attack that explodes on impact with a target. Dart Volley fires a poisonous dart at the target. Static Shot is a lightning attack which includes a blinding effect. Finally there's Flamethrower, which operates similar to Blunderbuss in the "more damage the closer the target is" effect, but it's fire instead of bleeding.
The pistol/shield option is fairly similar to dual-wielding pistols, but you're trading Glue Shot and Flamethrower for Absorb (you can absorb a projectile from an enemy for use against them later) or Deploy Ballistic Barrier (place a static barrier to intercept enemy projectiles). If you're in a situation where projectiles are a major concern, then the shield option's there. Personally I have a hard time choosing that over the mobility options of the rifle or dual-pistol's Flamethrower skill, but it's there if you need it. Well, assuming you don't want to use the actual Flamethrower at your disposal.
Wait, *actual* Flamethrower? As in more than one?
Indeed, and now we're getting to the good part. You know the various non-weapon skills you covered in your warrior post?
Yes, utility, healing, and elite skills. For warriors we can choose from options like shouts, banners, and stances to support our weapon skills.
That is correct: your utility skills *support* your weapon skills. As an engineer, my utility skills *become* my weapon skills. Let's start with the categories our utility skills far into: weapon kits, backpack kits, and turrets.
Weapon kits are essentially additional weapon sets we can switch to during battle in addition to the normal two sets everyone can swap between. There are a few different options here, but my personal favorite is the Flamethrower Kit. When activated, my weapon skills are replaced with five new skills. Flame Jet allows you to spray multiple enemies with fire while on the move. Flame Blast fires a ball of plasma towards your enemies that will explode upon impact. Air Blast not only interrupts enemy casts, but also knocks them back and deflects projectiles. Napalm creates a flame wall that will burn and blind your foes. Finally, Backdraft will pull your opponents towards you, setting them up for your other attacks.
Backpack kits for the most part operate like weapon kits and replace your weapon skills with new backpack-related abilities. A Grenade Kit, for example, gives you a regular grenade attack in addition to a variety of grenades that cause status effects. However, some backpack kits don't replace your weapon skills. The Med Kit gives you the option of dropping medical packs that can heal your allies if they should run over them. In this case, you could have a rifle out and in between shots, you could use your Med Kit to drop a medical pack for someone, then immediately go back to shooting.
Turrets are closer to the Med Kit in operation in that they won't replace your weapon skills. Instead you simply drop your turret on the ground and go back to doing whatever you were up to before. However while the medical packs are single-use (your ally picks them up and now it's gone), the turret has a little more presence on the battlefield. Once used, it stays on the battlefield for a while and does its specific task. A Rifle Turret is pretty self-explanatory: it shoots whatever is in range. Other options include the Flame Turret, Thumper Turret, and the Healing Turret.
Would've traded that worthless imp for one of these turrets in a heartbeat
So the Healing Turret would give you a healing utility skill in addition to your self-healing skill?
Not quite. The Healing Turret would actually take the place of your self-healing skill. Your choice there would be between the turret, the Med Kit, and Elixir H.
Okay, so if the turret can heal you, I suppose that implies that you could heal yourself by running over your own medical packs from the Med Kit.
I cannot confirm that, but my instincts say no simply because of the Tool Belt.
What does a belt have to do with healing?
The Tool Belt is an engineer specific trait, kind of like adrenaline is for you warriors. The Tool Belt gives us the option of overcharging our kits.
So you won't miss out on all of that exploding from your Goblin Engineering days?
Very funny, but no. Basically it gives engineers a cooldown option to get an extra feature out of our kits. In the case of the Med Kit, you get a self-healing option. Grenade Kits can be overcharged for a grenade barrage. If I were using a Mine Kit and had a bunch of mines set up, I could use the overcharge to set them all off. Finally, I could overcharge a turret to get a more powerful attack (e.g. Rifle Turret would fire off a burst attack while the Thumper Turret would knock down nearby foes in addition to doing damage to them).
So to summarize, your profession's going from "a neat little hobby" to making you a full fledged Gnomish Army Knife in combat. That about cover it?
You're cutting out a lot of the nuance and emphasis, but yes, that describes the situation in layman's terms. However that doesn't quite cover the potential the new improved engineer has. A novice engineer could just grab a rifle and happily fire away at his foes. A true master however will be making use of all tools at his disposal.
Let's say that I'm using a rifle, Med Kit, Mine Kit, Flamethrower Kit, and a Thumper Turret; there's also the elite skill, but I'm missing information for those other than the Elixir Kit and that's not part of this example. Now with this loadout, we'll say that I'm getting ready to fight a group of enemies. Rather than just using my rifle right away, I could set up for the fight by placing mines and a Thumper Turret in between myself and my foes. Next I could start the pull either with a Hip Shot or, in the case of one target being a bigger threat than the others, a Net Shot to stagger him behind the rest of the group. Now that the group's heading my way, I can continue firing away while they run through the mines and the AoE from the turret. Once they start to get close though, I can switch to the flamethrower for AoE damage. Between the mines, turret, and flamethrower, this should be enough to handle the weaker parts of the pull. That just leaves the foe I immobilized and any potential survivors of the AoE assault. If I need to finish off the survivors, I could use Net Shot again and go back to AoE work. Once that's finished, I can switch over to the Rifle and use the rotation I mentioned earlier to take them down.
This is only one example of the potential of the engineer profession. I could go on about potential battle scenarios for pages, but this should set the tone for what's possible. Hopefully I've managed to properly convey the exact reasons for my excitement about moving to Tyria in this post.
I think you covered the matter fairly well. Thanks for your time, Med. If you come up with anything else that needs a post, let me know.
That should just about cover the engineer profession. That's two down, six to go. Time to start persuading the rest of the team to get to writing. See you next time.
Ragar: Not much to report from the last few weeks. Guild's still on a bit of a hiatus for the summer, so most of us have been enjoying the time off. We have had a few jobs here and there through a buddy of mine - mostly Naxxramas runs, but with the occasional Vault of Archavon or Obsidian Sanctum trip. Admittedly not the most exciting work in the world, but it's still practice for those guys and they got some upgrades.
Medeleth: Not all of us got upgrades...
Ragar: Look, I said I was sorry.
Medeleth: You sent me off to die!
Ragar: Hey now, I didn't line up that job. My shaman friend found that group and asked for a DPS. If I recall, you said something like "I suppose I could take a break from my research to support the masses. They shall stand in awe and wonder at the sight of fel magic and engineering prowess when wielded by a true genius." What happened to all that bravado, Mr. "Creation and destruction are my playthings"?
Medeleth: That "bravado" as you call it was trampled under the boot of Instructor Razuvious as the group proceeded to fail and call retreat three times before calling the raid.
Ragar: Wait, you couldn't kill Razuvious? How in the Nether is that even possible?
Medeleth: Combination of bad Mind Control timing, failure to swap threat between understudies so Bone Barrier was always up, and lack of healing on the understudies. Basically the one tanking Razuvious would either die or the Mind Control would break, then he would immediately run over to myself and one of the mages and express his dissatisfaction at our setting him ablaze.
Ragar: Well you didn't get locked into the run, so that's a plus. Besides, it couldn't have taken that long if you couldn't kill one boss.
Medeleth: We were in there for over an hour. It just took them that long to get ready between pulls. To properly illustrate just how slow these people were, your shaman friend had enough time after a wipe to fly over, use his Ebonweave and Spellweave cooldowns, fly back, then get a drink before they finally remembered they were in a damn dungeon.
Ragar: Well, I think you've beat most of my bad pickup group stories with that one.
Medeleth: Ah, but I'm not finished yet. This was not a true pickup group in the strictest sense of the word. This was a guild run with something like 60-70% of this 25-man group from that guild. These were people who had worked with each other on a regular basis and had apparently set foot into Ulduar. The raid leader even tried using that as encouragement. He said at one point, "C'mon guys, we've taken down Ignis with five people up before. We can do this!" Maybe it's just me, but instead of being motivated by that, all I hear is that either half of his 10-man group or 80% of his 25-man group got themselves killed.
Ragar: Realism does tend to cut into the motivational power of a battle speech. So I take it you don't want any more jobs from them?
Medeleth: If I end up in a group with those people again, I can and will find a way to make you suffer. It may be the next day, it may be a year down the road, but I will have my revenge.
Not much on the raiding front this week - the guild Solannis and I run with took a break from 25-man raiding this week while they recruited some extra members. That left us with 10-man Ulduar and whatever else people came up with to fill the time. Still plenty to do for us though, so we made due.
First up was the Children's Week festivities. I'm still not entirely sure why the matrons think it's a good idea to send children off with strangers who fight dragons, undead, and variousotherunpleasantthings for a living. I can think of some cynical reasons, but I'd hope they're not quite that desperate for the extra space in the orphanage. Regardless, me, Sol, and Medeleth participated and ran around orphans to various parts of Azeroth and Outland. Med complained a bit about it being a "waste of his genius" or something like that, but he's really a big softy. One that toys with demonic forces, but a softy nonetheless. None of us have finished all of the achievements for the title, but I don't see that happening any time soon. The Utgarde Pinnacle run is no problem, but I've got no desire to step foot into a battleground as is, let alone with a kid trailing behind me. Oh well, no big deal. I'm perfectly happy with Chef Ragar and I think Sol's got another title in mind. Med doesn't seem to care all that much, so he'll probably stick with his Silvermoon title.
Speaking of the lock, he actually got a little raid time in this week. The first time was an Ulduar-10 swap: we were going after Hodir and Mimiron, so there was no need for a second tank. After last week's "ta-daa!" incident, Sol and I talked to the raid leader and explained that we have better options available when DPS is required. Admittedly though, Sol could've been a bit more diplomatic than saying, "My Ret gear is garbage. I have no intention of making it anything other than garbage. Grab the lock." Regardless, it worked and Med got another shot at raiding. I don't think we saved the meters from the run, but from what I recall, it seemed like a acceptable showing for someone with 90% crafted or AH gear and below hit cap.
Later in the week he had another shot in a 10-man Naxxramas group; some new people in the guild needed gear, so I talked them into taking Med along for the ride. A couple hours later, Med came out with twonew pieces of gear (one that he can't put on till he gets more hit rating though) and enough Emblems of Heroism for a third. All in all, a fairly productive week for the lock.
Not a whole lot of news for the rest of the team (shammy's gone Elemental for the moment, Mordigg's mostly been herb farming), but our priest has been making pretty good progress as of late. He's still got eight more levels to go till he's caught up with the rest of us, but that shouldn't take too much longer. He said something about using a Discipline spec to level in Northrend. Personally I don't understand using that over Shadow, but considering me and Sol leveled as Protection, we're not really in a position to judge anyone. He's still got no idea how to heal though, so that'll be a fun learning curve once he starts instancing.
I finally managed to line Medeleth up with some Emblem of Heroism level work. The catch? It was Malygos, the guy you're supposed to work your way up to through heroic 5-man dungeons and 10-man Obsidian Sanctum and Naxxramas. Med, however, hasn't seen a heroic since Outland. All of the gear he's got is either stuff the team crafted, stuff we bought off the AH or with spare tokens, and a couple of quest drops. His rotation was based off of notes we pulled from a research site and mostly untested (hard to get into a rotation while doing dailies when everything dies in 3-5 hits). I'll admit it - I thought it was going to be a pretty ugly showing on Med's part, but my guildies wanted a ranged DPS and it was either him or I play hunter with my tanking gun.
I suppose I should've given the lock a bit more credit than I did. For someone with no heroic experience, third place isn't too shabby. Admittedly though, that number is inflated a bit by the fact that warlocks can cheat a bit at the fight by teleporting out of the vortexes, but considering that Med didn't have enough health to consistently survive those, I'll let that one slide. Shame there wasn't another warlock in that run though. It would've been helpful to have someone with an Affliction spec to compare Destruction against.
No lock loot from the run, though a resto shaman friend of ours finally got her healing mace, so that's a plus. Med did get his twoachievements though and his first two Emblems of Heroism after being 80 for about a month. At this rate he should get his first piece of Emblem gear sometime this fall.
Sorry for the lack of posts; it's been somewhat of a slow week on the adventuring front, combined with me being busy with paperwork. Not everything about the "dungeoneer for hire" business is glamorous.
Mordigg went on the guild Naxxramas run again and picked up a couple of pieces along with some Emblems of Valor to go towards some additional equipment.
Solannis and I mostly did our dailies during the week to chip away towards the extra gold we need to buy Medeleth's epic flight training. We could pool our money together and buy it now, but I'm not fond of breaking the bank for that when he's done leveling. Besides, since he doesn't have any gathering skills, it's kind of a low priority despite how much he complains about the speed.
Speaking of the lock, we managed to snag a couple more pieces from crafters and the auction house for Med since I haven't been able to line up any heroic work for him yet. In the meantime I've had him out doing jobs for the Sons of Hodir since he doesn't have that nifty "I'm a scribe and don't have to grind that rep" shoulder enchant. Right now he says he's at 1780 spell power and 156 hit rating self-buffed. I have no idea how that compares to other casters since I'm a melee-type guy, but it's better than where we started.
I did work with our resident boomkin some during the slow periods. Another few slow nights and he'll be ready to do something in Borean Tundra other than sit by the mailbox and wait for alchemy supplies.
I think until we hear more from the scouts up in Storm Peaks about Ulduar and how to get inside, it'll be fairly quiet on the raiding front for the next few weeks. I'll comment when something comes to mind, but if anyone's got any requests, we'd be glad to hear them. All of the replies I've seen so far have been to stories where I tried to be funny or some of the posts where me and the guys argued amongst ourselves, but if there's anything in particular tank-wise that people are dying to hear about, I'm open to suggestions. If all people want is us talking and/or arguing, then I can work on that too (I've got a post idea about what we 80s do when we're not the ones out in the field, but I'm trying to figure out if it'd only be funny to me).
Oh, and I do have one request if anyone reading this can help me out. I've been looking for a destruction warlock blog for Med to read through. I've got a few Affliction blogs bookmarked that he read through when he was using those builds back in Outland, but I haven't been able to find anything like that for destruction. We've looked at the normal research sites out there to tweak his rotations and all, but it's quite different to read mathematical proofs versus the commentary and opinions of someone who uses the build on a daily basis. So if someone out there can make a suggestion, I'd appreciate it and I'm sure Med would to, even if he'd die before admitting that he needed assistance.
Ragar: That is, if we weren't limited by contract to only have one agent out in the field at any given time. Anyways, we've got a new member of the team that just finished their training and are getting prepared to go out and do some real work for the team. Per his request, I've agreed to allow him to introduce himself, so I'll let him take over (I'm gonna regret this...)
Medeleth: Greetings and salutations. I am Medeleth, your friendly neighborhood genius. In addition to the field exercises that he keeps pressing upon me when I'm trying to do real work, I’ve been asked by Ragar to help contribute to this blog project of his and to provide some of my own writings to share with the world. I had to agree of course - as a genius, it is my civic duty to help enlighten my fellow man. It also provides me with a new venue to show off the more recent developments from my research.
“Research?” you ask. Yes, I am a researcher. The majority of my time is spent delving into the secrets of the universe. Through pain-staking work and experimentation, I have unlocked the keys to the myriad mysteries of our modern world. The man you see before you is a student of the one true path to knowledge, the powers of creation and destruction themselves!
What? No, not fel magic! Engineering! Why you people focus on such things as “classes”, I will never understand... While it is true that I am a practitioner of the fel arts, that’s merely a side job of sorts to support my real work. Yes, there’s some research involved in that field as well, but it is mere child’s play to a genius like myself. I’ve already mastered all of the spells the trainers have come up with and I’ve tamed their most “fearsome” demon, so there’s no challenge left to thrill me in that field. However, I will admit that the warlock training does have its uses.
While I would prefer to spend the majority of my time in my lab discovering the answers to all of life’s mysteries, there are obstacles to this goal. Particularly irksome is acquiring resources for my work. Nothing in this modern world of ours is free, especially not the exotic items I require for my ground-breaking discoveries. It would be ideal if I could simply craft something to satisfy the shopkeeper’s need for shiny baubles, but alas their primitive minds cannot fathom the brilliance of my work and, as such, they will only offer me a pittance in exchange. As one cannot make any headway economically by selling their creations for less than the component costs, I am left to fall back on my warlock abilities to generate the income required to support my research.
Now that I’ve made a suitable introduction, I believe I can provide you, the readers, with an idea of what you will see in my future columns. The focus of my writing here shall be on engineering: my current research, recent findings, etc. It is my fondest wish that by showing you the mechanical wonders my craft is capable of, some of you may be inspired to conduct your own research. Perhaps one day we could discuss our research as peers and together we can pave the way to a brighter tomorrow for Azeroth. Additionally (and primarily because Ragar doesn’t know anyone else willing to write about this) I will give my thoughts on my secondary profession, though I will admit right now that any warlock writings are going to be from the perspective of “how does this affect me as an engineer?” I may capture souls and have the powers of flame and shadow at my beck and call, but I am first and foremost a scientist. Until next time, I bid you all farewell. Back to you, sir.
Ragar: I'm shocked. You managed to keep it just short of a novel.
Medeleth: Brevity has its place, but to provide a truly accurate representation of myself in this introduction, now was not such an occasion. Besides, it's not like you're going to run out of space any time soon. Remember which one of us is your technical support for this writing venture.
Ragar: Yeah, yeah, I remember. Back to the matter at hand though. Now that you're 80, we will have to set you up with some decent starting gear before you can start dungeon diving. Sol gave you those bracers from the Emblem of Valor guy and our priest buddy gave you those gloves, so that's at least a couple of decent pieces to go with your goggles. Are you planning on changing specs any time soon? Just so I know what I need to start shopping around for.
Medeleth: No, I believe my current talent allocation will suffice for any further excursions into the field you may demand of me. I will admit that I do miss the rotation style of Affliction to some degree, but Destruction has its own charms now that it's no longer casting Shadow Bolt from here to eternity. There's also somewhat of a parallel between it and the goblin engineers with whom I have associated. It's not quite as structured as true engineering, but there is a similarity. Now if I could somehow combine the two, then it would be another matter altogether. I'm making some headway into that field, but "someone" keeps interrupting me with requests to play adventurer or assassin or whatever someone's paying for that particular day.
Ragar: You know the rules - you're on the team, you're gonna contribute. Besides, we're supplying all of your materials anyways, seeing as how you dropped mining a while back.
Medeleth: I'm aware, I'm simply voicing my opinion. I feel my efforts would be better suited in my laboratory or poring over my notes, but I suppose if someone has to represent the team as artillery, I can't really fault you for sending me out. So when are you planning on pushing me out into some zombie-infested sepulcher or something to that effect?
Ragar: We'll see. I'm guessing that the guild won't be looking for a DPS from us for a while, so it'll probably just be heroics for the near future. Not a bad idea anyways since your gear could still use some improvement. I'll admit I don't know casters all that well, but I know you're not at hit cap and I'm guessing that 1612 spell power isn't gonna cut it for long. I'll give you a heads up once I've got something lined up for you.
Not a whole lot to report for myself the last few weeks: cooking dailies, farming ore, the usual. Mordigg spent most of the last few weeks gathering herbs to mill as he tries to make his Darkmoon Card: Greatness trinket; right now we've got the Prisms Deck made so Daikaja can get the Darkmoon Card: Illusion as a healing trinket, but the other decks are all sitting at five or six out of eight cards. He's also run a few more heroics for emblems towards his tier pieces, but really I just need to get him assigned to a 10-man Naxx run again.
Solannis finally got to take down Malygos (well, the 10-man version at least), so now he's got that new tanking neck he'd been looking for. Guild's still working on the bigger version of the fight, but it's something. Funny thing was, he got the achievement, but didn't get the Champion of the Frozen Wastes title. I took a look at his achievements and found the problem. Apparently he's never gone to Oculus; I suppose I'll have to fix that at some point and schedule him for a run one of these days. Since Sol's become our main field agent for raiding these days, he needs a title and until he gets to work and gets Chef, he'll have to settle for Champion of the Frozen Wastes. That or I could make him get Challenger again, but I'm guessing that suggestion won't go over well.
Most of the team's effort the last few weeks though has gone into two of our cloth-wearing members. Our senior engineer, Medeleth, has been making fairly good progress into Northrend. Granted, getting him to step out of the lab was a pain, but once I got it into his head that he wouldn't be able to upgrade his goggles or learn the secrets of the motorcycle without some legwork, he started burning through those quests in Borean Tundra. Earlier today he hit 74, so it shouldn't be too much longer before he catches up to the rest of us and we can start working on some gear for him.
The other clothie who's made some great progress would be our resident priest, Matheion. Up till now, we've never had a priest pass the 20 mark. They'd always end up running for the hills or vanishing from the face of Azeroth or something like that. Regardless, we've finally got a priest that's made it past the Barrens and through the proper application ofheirloomitems, craftable pieces from other members of the team, and the occasional threat, he'll make it to Northrend or die trying.
